WASHINGTON — Pressing an election-year point, Republicans pushed yet another bill through the House on Wednesday to repeal the nation’s two-year-old health care law, a maneuver that forced Democrats to choose between President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement and a public that is persistently skeptical of its value.

The vote was 244-185, with five Democratic defectors siding with Republicans.

By Republican count, the vote marked the 33rd time in 18 months that the tea party-infused GOP majority has tried to eliminate, defund or otherwise scale back the program — opponents scornfully call it “Obamacare” — since the GOP took control of the House.

Repeal this year by Congress is doomed, since the Democratic-controlled Senate will never agree.

But Illinois Rep. Peter Roskam said before joining other Republicans in Wednesday’s House vote: “Here’s the good news. The voters get the last word in November. Stay tuned.”

Republicans assailed the law as a job-killing threat to the economic recovery, but Democrats said repeal would eliminate consumer protections that already have affected millions.

“The intent of the president’s health care law was to lower costs and to help create jobs. … Instead, it is making our economy worse, driving up costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire,” said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

He cited a study by a business group that estimated that one of the bill’s taxes would cost up to 249,000 jobs, and a different estimate that a second tax would “put as many as 47,100 in jeopardy.”

But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said repeal would take away provisions that guarantee coverage for children with pre-existing medical conditions, reduce prescription drug costs for some seniors, provide for protective checks for patients of all ages and ensure rebates totaling more than $1 billion this summer for policy holders.

The five Democrats who sided with Republicans in the house vote were Reps. Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike Ross of Arkansas and Dan Boren of Oklahoma.

A member of a "sophisticated cocaine trafficking conspiracy" was convicted Monday in federal court in Denver of conspiring to distribute, and possessing with intent to distribute, five kilograms or more of cocaine, according to prosecutors.

A man who shot two eighth graders at Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity to attempted murder, will not be allowed to leave the Colorado Mental Health Institute's grounds without supervision, according to a Jefferson County District Court ruling.

After the San Francisco Bay Area, metro Denver experienced the biggest apartment rent increases this decade in the country. But plenty of new supply should put future rent gains closer to the national average, according to a new report from RealPage, a real estate research firm.